Since 1989, Dave Thomas was one of the most recog-nizable faces on TV. He appeared in more than 800 com-mercials for the hamburger chain named for his daughter.rnEven though he was successful, Thomas remained trou-bled by his childhood.“He still won't let anyone see his feet, which are out of shape because he has never had proper-fitting shoes,”Wendy said in 1993 and told us that sixty-one years ago, Dave Thomas was born to a single mother. He was adopted as a baby by Rex and Auleva Thom-as when he was six weeks old. After Auleva died when he was 5, Thomas spent years on the road as Rex traveled around seeking construction work.“He fed me,”Thomas said,“and if I got out of line, he'd beat me. When I found out I was adopted, I didn't want to talk about it.”When he was 12 years old, Thomas started working at a barbecue restaurant. Moving out on his own at 15, Thomas worked in many restaurants. But he had something much better in mind.“I thought if I owned a restaurant,”he said,“I could eat for free.”When he was 24, meeting with Harland Sanders led Thomas to a career as a manager of a KFC restaurant that made him a mil-lionaire in 1968.